[Mark Suszko]

Yeah, its not a new idea: there are photos in an old CINEFX magazine in my collection of the Original-Star-Wars era ILM shooting motion controlled models against blue and orange back-lit chromakey backdrops. They used fluorescent tubes for theirs, which may make for fewer single hotspots than LED’s even COB LED’s on a ribbon…

You will still need some separation distance from the screen and the actor to reduce not just spill, but light wrap with the key color in it.

They seem like a great idea if you have no need for portability.

What exact color the LED’s might get you isn’t nearly as important as controlling saturation and overall evenness of the source. So the right diffusion material would be vital. Getting it in an affordable, suitable seamless size might be a problem.

That ring-light and beaded screen stuff was popular back in the day but like Todd says, it was pricy. It also had a limited amount of coverage it could do, because of the cone angle of the LED ring, and the fact the retro-reflective bead fabric maintained hight brightness by having a *narrow* return angle to work with…. and the ring light also sometimes interacted with eyeglasses and reflective jewelry on the talent, no to mention prompter mirrors…

NFL Films used it for those tight bust shots of players used in the intro /stats b-roll packages with great success for some seasons. I don’t know if they still use it. But you can’t key a whole car with one. Or anything bigger than up to about 2 people – if – they stand hip-to-hip.

The upcoming breakthru keying tech is light-field based, and won’t need any kind of backdrop or color factors. You just dial-in the distance to the lens of the subjects you want to see, and z-depth controls what’s visible and what’s not. I think it’s working in a lab somewhere already but won’t be commercially available for a few more years.

[Mark Suszko]

You raise an interesting point but I’m not sure I entirely agree with what I’m understanding to be your premise; that only a Maori editor can “legitimately” edit a Maori-related program. Forgive me if I’m mischaracterizing what you wrote. If I got that part of what you said right, I’d say it’s never a bad thing to teach anybody how to edit. Media literacy helps people communicate and reach minds. But it’s perhaps a little paternalistic and not serving your deeper motivation to be fair to their culture, to -oversee- the edit –thru– a technician of a particular ethnic extraction. That’s still colonialism, even tokenism. If your motivation is to help right the wrongs of history, and to show deference and respect, I feel you need to step back another whole level from the project; give them the tools and training and let them do the producing, writing, shooting, editing – all of it, autonomously.

You sound like you’re really on their side, looking for the best way to respect and honor their story and their traditions, and I think that’s great. If you mean that, I think you have to “let go”, give up preconceived expectations of what it “should” look like, and be there only in an advisory capacity, if you mean to be true to your stated goals.

But let me get back to my first sentence.

I don’t think you should feel guilty if you edit it yourself, just because you’re not one of them. Part of our art… any art, really – is how we each uniquely interpret the elements we combine to tell a story. If you “train” a Maori editor, you’re training them in your Western editing technique, to edit the way *you* would. You’re imposing a european-derived aesthetic on the work, and the only difference is how that person filters what you’ve taught them thru their own cultural background when they make their aesthetic choices. *If they’re allowed that lattitude*. Am I saying you should leave them struggling without any help? Re-invent 100 years’ of technique themselves, just for the sake of “authenticity”? No. But, let me turn it around. Maybe you need the Maori to train *you*; To advise you on storytelling structure from their cultural perspective. Beginnings, middles, endings – three-act structure – plot arcs – I have no idea how their traditional storytelling differs from our established norms in these areas. But they can watch how you’re shaping the story and advise you if you’re not doing it the way they might. I think that should have been the plan from the start of the project, and maybe you did do that, and if so, I congratulate you.

I understand that indigenous peoples of NZ and AUS have a different cultural perspective, regarding time and the perception of it. It would be interesting to see that cultural perspective reflected in the way the video is edited. Likely it would look “unconventional”, compared to Western media traditions. That can be a good thing. You’ve already shot the footage, though, so it’s already a level down from being “culturally authentic”, because you shot it from -your- perspective as an “outsider”, and conscious or not, you’ve already imposed a certain ethos into the source footage by your choice of what you shot and how you shot it. To be dogmatically true to the premise of deferring to their culture, they should have done their own shooting. But what’s done is done.

The TL:DR version of my response: teaching more people to edit is always good. Diversity in hiring and assigning creative work is great. But it doesn’t automatically make your project any more “legitimate” just because you changed the ethnicity of the editor, if the editor is just executing someone else’s vision. You may get a different interpretation and perhaps a more culturally-aware take on things, but never assume that’s automatic, and artists cross cultural divides all the time, cross-pollinating ideas.

Finish your own edit this time, with their advice and guidance. Train them on the tools and help finance their next story, then sit back and enjoy the ride. Best of luck in what sounds like a wonderful and useful project!

[Mark Suszko]

The tiny one I bought for uke videos was just over twenty bucks on Amazon, three years back; I looked it up and it was a Rainiers RGBW 10W LED PAR can, but they have replaced that model with one that has a crystal-like diffuser on the front. Anyhow, for twenty bucks, it’s almost worth it just for S&G.

[Mark Suszko]

Not all of them have or need fans, especially the really small ones, If barn doors won’t do, there’s always black Cinefoil, and bulldog clips, my weapons of choice.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, it was specifically an American DJ brand LED PAR can, you can look that up and find it or something similar under a hundred, heck I bought a baby one for my uke band for 50. They come with DIP switches or menu buttons on them to set the color and brightness as well as effects like strobe to audio picked up by thr light’s internal mic, cycle thru colors at different speeds, ramp one color up and down in a loop, imitate lightning flashes or police strobes etc.. a little tedious to do by hand, so we also got a little three-slider external DMX controller for it, cost a other $50, runs an XLR cabe to the light and works like a little dimmer board. if you already have DMX controls then the XLT cable is all you need, plus AC power.

https://youtu.be/g0ON1EzrZzQ
ours didn’t have the extra UV light feature, could be cool if you want to get funky with black light paints and chalks.

This Chauvet is similar

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SlimPAR56–chauvet-dj-slimpar-56-rgb-par?mrkgcl=28&mrkgadid=3301333117&rkg_id=0&product_id=SlimPAR56&campaigntype=shopping&campaign=aaShopping%20-%20SKU%20-%20Live%20Sound%20%26%20Lighting&adgroup=Lighting%20-%20Chauvet%20DJ%20-%20slimpar56&placement=google&adpos=1o1&creative=280136035372&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=Cj0KEQjw8-LnBRCyxtfMl-Cbu48BEiQA6eUMGtcvO4qnEgVsg55PRqDtDRB0CqeqQ8eArFBwBHNJHNcaAoas8P8HAQ

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Mark Suszko]

Cringe at the suggestion if you like, but, we have bought a couple of multicolor American DJ type LED lights to use as color accents on shoots because you can dial in whatever color and intensity you like, and these were in the $150 range, run cool and quiet, are light weight as well. Come with bard doors, no gel holder, but a smart guy can rig something up… we got them because getting color gels became such a hassle for us… and now it’s not an issue. Only problem that came up was, a flicker that we are able to dial-out using variable shutter int he camera, what Sony calls ‘clear-scan, from back in the day when you had to adjust shutter to get clean images of CRtT displays. Most better cameras have a variation of the feature.,

[Mark Suszko]

Todd, that’s just so outrageously expensive!

[Mark Suszko]

Black or gray cloth, ticks all the boxes for ease of use, economy, flexibility.

[Mark Suszko]

Video projector? it would have to be expensive to get the amount of light needed in that application. Though switching out the black for a gray would make that easier. The options for colors and patterns with the video projector would truly be infinite.

[Mark Suszko]

The modularity appeals to me, suggesting that later upgrades and life extension might be easier to do than before. It would be exciting to see some additional hardware options from secondary suppliers come out of that, but baby steps.